Writing is an Addiction and I can’t kick it
What is the hardest thing about writing? The hardest thing about writing is being disciplined. Nobody just gets to be a good writer. Like anything such as sports, painting, professional work, it takes time and effort. I find the most difficult part is always the first line of a story or poem, after that everything flows. I also find it hard having hidden behind a professional persona for so many years to stand in the spotlight of one’s own creation, and know that there is no one else with you on the stage.
I think so many people talk about writing this or that; my advice to them is always stop talking about it, and put words on paper every day, even if you don’t like what you’ve written. Much of what we write isn’t good the first or second time around, and it takes many passes of the pen. It just doesn’t happen that the first draft ever makes it. It’s also difficult to be draconian as you edit something you’ve written that you really like. One has to be merciless however with getting rid of words that don’t advance the plot or characters. I always find less is better, and I rarely read a book where I am thankful for pages and pages of descriptive writing. On the other hand, many people were critical of the Goldfinch because of the amount of extraneous information, but I would argue that in fact it was all necessary, and in the end the writer came to resemble a modern day Dickens. I bow to this book and it’s writer Donna Tartt.
The writer that most influenced me in my early twenties was Joan Didion. I loved her sparsity of prose and the irony that she managed to create by picking just the right words to describe situations and characters. Play it As It Lays is still one of my favorite books. Before Didion I loved Francois Mauriac the great French existentialist.
After Didion I fell in love with All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy because of his breathtaking prose descriptions, which were in fact completely extraneous to the plot! Recently I’ve admired We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, because of the raw and youthful passion with which her pen strikes the page. I also found Moshin Hamid’s 2013 book How to Get Filthy in Rising Asia very interesting, because he uses “you” as the central character, and that is an extremely hard thing to do as a writer, and you have to be very, very good to get away with it. I liked Jenny Olfill’s book The Department of Speculation, because it was written as a stream of consciousness story without much form, and again it worked, it was ballsy.
I’m currently listening to a book by John Edward Williams called Stoner written in 1965. And no it isn’t about a dope smoking pot addict; it’s about a professor at a Midwestern university in the early twentieth century. It’s dismally dreary and I simply can’t imagine writing a story like this. The main female character needs a good dose of anti-depressants and therapy, and I just keep bursting out laughing as the book slips deeper and deeper into the sludge of darkness. I am only a third of a way through it, so I’m hoping that by the end I’ll finally see its point.
Anyway if you want to be a writer, read vociferously, and decide what it is you do and don’t like about the books you read. I know that reading extensively has really helped me find a style and pace that suits me. I guess there are times as well when I know I can write just as well as what is published these days, and other times when I am overwhelmed and wonder why I try at all when there are such good writers already out there ahead of me.
Don’t give up because in the end you write for yourself and to discover who you are and what you think. It’s about love of your craft and because you’re addicted and you can’t stop. When people look at me with admiration because I’ve written a few books, I usually smile and tell them it’s like any addiction, it takes me high and it takes me low, and I can’t live without it.
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